7th Dec '08 - Memories and musing

4am - Up again before the crack of dawn. The disco beats have finally stopped and the young drunks ended their shouts. In the corridor one lad is sleeping with his bottle. And I'm listening to snores of my fellow dorm occupants. It smells rough in here - all men!

The fear up on the snow yesterday made me look to "God" and wonder why I want danger. It was a glorious view and exhilarating but I thought, "I want to live". My heart went upwards. And all my foolish pretence of knowledge was insignificant.

Back in town, Damien Rice on my MP3 bringing me in the last few miles, I felt good. The happy tourists to look at. Almost all Polish. Healthy women in their shiny boots - high-heeled power symbols but practical in cold Poland. Some dancers in a shop window, advertising Puma and trying to seduce costumers. I sat in the low afternoon sun before walking up the street and settling on a bar to spend a few hours. Time to drink 19zl worth of Zywiec, yet again the foreigner without the wonderful hospitality of Asia that I've come to expect when I travel.

Many memories come to mind on this lonely holiday... of Aon, Fon, Dad and much more. My sins and failings and longings and happy times. Glorious memories, some.

Read some more of Suzuki's informal talks on Zen while I was drinking in the afternoon. Never quite seems to add-up. Sitting in the correct position is enlightenment, or Buddha mind. Well, I suppose I can kinda grasp it. The focus required means that to do it right brings you in that state - to be one-hundred percent doing something. Wonderful! To be lost in a moment, a task. I like that. Though Buddhism requires faith in it's karmic rebirths and what not. The practice of presence of mind, Buddha mind, if that's the same thing, seems blessed. I love the calm acceptance of it - the joy and resignation.


10am - On the bus, soon to depart for Krakow. The snow falling gently passed my eyes and onto the wet ground. It settles in parts. Branches, roofs, crooks and crannies, car windows. An artist walked with me from the hostel on his way to get coffee. He shook my hand heartily as I walked onto the station. Calm pleasant morning. Looking forward to the city.

5th Dec '08 - Life's Canvas

4pm -

Whiled away the day, watching the mountains and the people. Reading Kerouac's Big Sur - the madman he. It's an advert to warn against the dangers of prolonged drinking - days on end.

Then I moved to Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Suzuki. I liked the idea of the waterfall... the separated droplets will join again with the body of water at the bottom.

Death will be the end of suffering. But while alive use the time. For no purpose other than experience, which will vanish away, memories and all. It's not that anything is gained or not. The insignificance of life... it's a blip, a twitch. We all reach nirvana whether we try or not.

I'll live now. Use the moment, the canvass. The paint dries. The sun sets. The river doesn't think. Lao Tzu my teacher.

A dred-l0ck beard baldy once told me that the enlightened monk leaves the monastery.

In the end back with the mother waters and the twinkling of the stars and the slurping of the deer at the rivers edge. We will be the river, the deer, the slurp.


8pm -

A blue whirlwind had started up spinning in Deeds Grove front room and Jert was nonchalantly doing something... "Look Jert a ****ing whirlwind"... and I woke up to the wind howling outside.